"No. No, you little shit. You sit in that fucking chair and listen to me, you pencil-dicked mouth-breathing pen-pushing pile of fuck. I make an order of magnitude more in one month than you make all year because I know what the fuck I'm talking about. I supplied every part of Origin. I put together Harbinger. I designed every phase of Perseus. None of this would exist without me. So before you try to throw me under the goddamn bus, shut up and listen.

"You collection of slack-jawed, drooling corporate dickballs decided he should be shipped off to some ass-end research colony in the first place. Now you're going to blame me for losing him? You assholes were the ones to throw that investment to the wind. You knew Mindoir was in the Verge. You knew that there were batarians out there. And I told you goddamn morons that she's still aware!"

The year is 2170. On a small colony on the planet Mindoir, Adam Shepard watches as batarian slavers massacre everyone he knows. Picking up a rifle, he sets out to face the attackers, with a screaming woman's voice in his head, a wave of blue-hot violence pouring through him, and one thought in his mind:

They all deserve to die.

Fast-forward thirteen years to 2183. Adam Shepard is now Commander Shepard, Citadel Spectre and former pointman for the Systems Alliance's First Encounter Assault Recon division. Several months after defeating the Reaper Sovereign and saving the galaxy, Shepard has been assigned to a brewing situation on an Alliance colony: an uprising by a force of Replica clone soldiers, commanded by an insane psychic named Paxton Fettel....

Expendable Clone: As with the original FEAR setting, the Replica exist to serve as expendable shock troops. They're outfitted with rugged, inexpensive gear and as a whole don't care about their losses. Several characters compare them to mechs, just with organic parts instead of robotic.

Five Rounds Rapid: Shepherd's reaction to a psychic manifestation by Alma is to hold down the trigger.

Henry Lawson is high up in ATC's structure, and the Pragia facility - where Jack escaped from the same time Mindoir went down - was run by ATC..

Because he's groundside dealing with Fettel, Shepherd is not aboard the Normandy when the Collectors attack.

Shepherd spends much of his career in FEAR, instead of the N7 track.

The Normandy survives the Collector attack since Shepard isn't aboard.

The date of the First Contact War is different from canon, a subtle indicator of how things as becomming different.

Gambit Pileup: The situation on Naxos, with at least four factions: Fettel and his Replica, Armacham, Shepard's crew, and the Collectors.

Genre Savvy: The first batarians who encounter Shepherd immediately switch from stunners to assault rifles and Take Cover with overlapping fields of fire, upon hearing an inhuman scream. It doesn't do them any good.

Shepard is fully aware that he creeps out everyone around him. He's trying to dial it back, especially around Ashley.

Giant Mook: Replica Heavy soldiers. Aside from immensely heavy armor, they have shields so powerful that it takes four direct hits with Carnage charged-particle grenades to disable them.

Hope Spot: The batarian squad leader gets one... right before Shepard slide kicks him down, and jump kicks his neck.

Humans Are Special: Humans produce the most psychics-per-population out of any known species, and apparently human psychics can use a much wider range of abilities than those of other species. Humanity is also the only species that has produced a psychic as powerful as Alma.

Hypocrite: Armacham's Director of Ethics calls the Council such when a turian Primarch delcares the Replica an affront to the "true" military because they have no purpose other than to fight and die, which is morally and ethically "bankrupt." The ATC director points out that the Council species uplifted the krogan solely so they could fight wars against the rachni, and that the turians essentially established an institutional, universal conscription to make their military the most powerful in the galaxy, denying their own people the right to say "no" and forcing them to serve in the military.

I Knew It: One poster suggested that Henry Lawson would be an Armacham man even before Peptuck confirmed it.

Improbable Aiming Skills: Teenage Shepard is able to put accurate three- or four-shot bursts into enemy heads while running at full speed; he only gets deadlier after joining the Alliance military.

Mage Killer: Every government has a special unit designed to deal with psychics, like the asari Justicars, turian Blackwatch or the human FEAR division.

Mega Corp.: Armacham. Establishing an entire colony with a thousand security personnel and producing two whole battalions of fully-outfitted Replica is mentioned casually in the first chapter, for example, and the Codex entry for Armacham confirms that they have so much economic and political clout that they can weather Spectre investigations.

Mook Horror Show: One might almost feel sorry for the batarians when Shepard goes berserk. Toward the end of the prologue, we discover most of the batarians were trying to run to their escape shuttle when Shepard killed them.

N.G.O. Superpower: Armacham. Of note is that their Codex entry has a Spectre reporting that ATC can mobilize "half a million troops" with "three Extranet calls."

Not So Different: Villain-on-villain example. Legions of disposable troops led by a commander who can take direct control of any one of them. The Replica or the Collectors?

Pillow Pistol: Shepherd sleeps with his pistol under his pillow. Almost a decade of service in FEAR has taught him paranoia.

Ashley notes that the reason he's sleeping with a pistol was because once they started sharing a bunk, they didn't have room for both of them and the shotgun.

Private Military Contractors: Armacham markets the Replicas as a voice-controlled PMC force, and is developing Fettel's Replicas to be controlled by a psychic commander. They also maintain their own PMC forces separate from the Replicas, as per FEAR.

Properly Paranoid: Yes, Shepard sleeps with a pistol under his pillow, jumps at shadows, and opens fire at things he sees out the corner of his eye. But considering the nature of the setting, he's perfectly justified with being incredibly paranoid.

Psychic Nosebleed: Though they don't actually bleed, psychics have to be careful when using their powers, as they can cause brain damage or death if they overtax themselves. Shepard has to be careful when using his powers, as undergoing slo-mo for too long will cause his to start suffering intense headaches, and he'll eventually black out if he doesn't stop.

Psychic Powers: Being that one of the dominant elements of the setting is FEAR, this is a given. Though all species generate psychics, the actual abilities each species has are limited (save for humans, per Word of God). The most common and only universal psychic power is telepathy.

Punched Across the Room: When Shepard punches someone while in slo-mo, his fists impact with so much force that the blow can send whoever's on the far end literally flying end over end. He punches so hard that his armor has been modified to create a mass effect "cushion" to absorb the impact from the blow lest he break his arm - which incidentally creates an expanding blue corona on impact, making it look like Shepard is punching someone with a flaming blue fist.

Shout-Out: There was a Delta Force operator in FEAR named A. Shepherd as well.

The turian anti-psychic force is called Blackwatch. Also Hilarious in Hindsight, as a few days after Peptuck shared this, Blackwatch was confirmed as a turian War Asset for Mass Effect 3. Blackwatch also deploys as killteams.

Shepard's punches move so fast when he's using slo-mo that they trigger enemy kinetic barriers, which normally only respond to incoming hypervelocity rounds. His arms move so quickly that he needs to use mass effect fields to cushion the blows lest he shatter his bones.

Uncanny Valley: In-universe, how most people respond to the Replica. Shepard has also had to deal with it thanks to his psychic abilities, which make him come off as disturbing at best. Ashley is apparently one of the few women Shepard tried to have a relationship with who managed to get past it.

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